It also outlines the geography of the USSR, showing how local influences made their exotic twists before the country was brought to its end.įrédéric Chaubin’s Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed was elected best book on architecture of the year 2010 by the International Artbook and Film Festival in Perpignan, France (Festival International du Livre d’Art & du Film Perpignan).But, they enjoy playing with their family and will happily play games. This puzzle of styles testifies to all the ideological dreams of the period, from the obsession with the cosmos to the rebirth of identity. Then comes the “speaking architecture” widespread in the last years of the USSR: a crematorium adorned with concrete flames (Crematorium, Kiev), a technological institute with a flying saucer crashed on the roof (Institute of Scientific Research, Kiev), a political center watching you like Big Brother (House of Soviets, Kaliningrad). A summer camp, inspired by sketches of a prototype lunar base, lays claim to Suprematist influence (Prometheus youth camp, Bogatyr). Some of the daring ones completed projects that the Constructivists would have dreamt of (Druzhba Sanatorium, Yalta), others expressed their imagination in an expressionist way (Palace of Weddings, Tbilisi). Taking advantage of the collapsing monolithic structure, the holes in the widening net, architects went far beyond modernism, going back to the roots or freely innovating. Their diversity announced the end of the Soviet Union. These buildings represent a chaotic impulse brought about by a decaying system. Contrary to the 1920s and 1950s, no “school” or main trend emerges here. His poetic pictures reveal an unexpected rebirth of imagination, an unknown burgeoning that took place from 1970 until 1990.

Photographer Frédéric Chaubin reveals 90 buildings sited in 14 former Soviet Republics which express what he considers to be the fourth age of Soviet architecture. Weird and wonderful buildings from the last decades of the USSR

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